Memories of You
by Darthsuki
Summary: He was only a memory to you, like a nightmare that had been long-since forgotten. You had accepted that he'd never be coming back; the grieving for his death had finished and life had moved on. But people tend to face their memories at some point or another in life, be they good or bad. But what happens when the analogy is literal, and the memory was nothing more than a lie?
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** In my attempt at doing a readershot with Grievous, I accidentally created something that will probably span several chapters instead of the one or two I had originally intended. Whether those chapters will span chronologically like a regular story or use this as a set-up for a cool readershot 'verse like I have for my Daft Punk readershots, I HAVEN'T A CLUE.

But uh...well, WHOOPS. Also I specified DFAB reader (Designated female at birth) because though I'll avoid gendered pronouns, my tried-n-true genitals for writing readershot smut is usually female by default unless suggested or asked otherwise.

Keep an eye out for continued chapters for this. Though this won't be as important to me as my other ongoing Star Wars fic, Truth Within, my lack of time and whatnot with my upcoming graduation has me just wanting to do some relaxing readershots instead.

* * *

Complicated. That was the only word you could use to even begin describing how you felt about what you had experienced. In all of one day, you'd been kidnapped, nearly killed three times, then confronted with a lover you had thought died nearly a year ago. A lover who was, for all accounts, nothing more than a whispered name to be written in old legends of a race that wasn't your own.

Honestly, you didn't even recognize him at first. He had changed in body and mind so completely that there was almost nothing left of him in soul. Metal encased what little organic flesh left to him, his voice rendered harsh and ragged from the damage of the crash you had assumed killed him mere days, weeks, _months_ beforehand. In hindsight, you would have called it a miracle, a blessing, a work of whatever gods that existed in the heavens to bring back one of the only people you trusted with your entire existence.

But at the first moment of seeing him, the only emotion that flooded your veins was utter terror.

Your wrists were bound. Your shoulders were in the clutches of droids, held still as if they still felt a worry that you would attempt to turn and run (as if there was anywhere to run to, since the ship itself had long since left the surface of the planet). The pressure hurt, but it had soon become nothing more than a dull, pulsing ache. Something that would leave bruises the next day.

He entered the empty, darkened room with an air of muddled regality. A wounded, but very deadly predator, movements as sleek and fluid as a river as it crashed down the side of a mountain. Even slouched and across the room, his height was obvious and tremendous over your own-plenty to make you feel intimidated with your first, sharp gasp upon sight of him.

He was a shadow. He was a beast. But you didn't truly realize the extend of the rumors for the creature's aura of strength until he stood before you.

To call him a droid was not only offensive in later hindsight, but outright incorrect. Even though his cape surrounded most of his shoulders, there were still slight, but pulsing organs within his chest, protected with durasteel plates. His face was covered in a skeletal-like mask, but what struck you with the most awe and terror weren't any of the former items, but his eyes.

They were sharp, like a predator. Gold and sleek, they were not the eyes of any sort of droid you had ever seen. They were organic. They were powerful. They were the eyes of a skilled warrior and expert tactician.

But there was something more about those sharp, golden eyes that stared down at you, unyeilding and silent. They were _familiar_ eyes. You had seen them before. A year before, to be exact.

To say you couldn't breathe was an understatement.

 _You couldn't even think._

"Sir," One of the droids beeped behind you, half-forcing you out of your terrified eye-lock. "This is the villager you requested to be brought on-board."

The general didn't reply at first. His stare held on you, so harsh and striking that all you could do in feeble response was glance down at the ground, body shaking like a leaf in the wind. The air was suddenly so cold, even though you were wearing layers of heavy cloth that was originally supposed to compensate for far, far colder weather. You had grown far too used to the heat of another planet before they had sent you away.

Luckily, the silence wasn't prolonged for more than half a minute. However, it was punctuated with a question that you didn't expect to get from the most feared general of the droid armies of the Separatists. It was simple. It was concise. It was...gentle.

"Tell me your full name." It wasn't exactly something you expected from him, and the confusion must have been obvious on your face when you finally glanced up at him. But the motion, the confusion, maybe even the assumed hesitation angered the general, because he took a sudden step forward and loomed even more heavily over your body.

You cowered back and stuttered out your full name, barely able to get it out of your mouth without catching on half of the syllables.

More silence.

"Do you know the name…," General Grievous began, slowly, heavily. He sounded as though he was trying to weigh his words. "...Qymaen jai Sheelal?"

The name did plenty to perk your attention. You hadn't heard it for so many months. After you had left your home, nobody had known about the warlord; the savior and demigod of the Kaleesh.

Your dead lover.

You stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out in silence what he could know of that name or the person it belonged to. But for some reason, despite the situation, you felt a well of anger start to bubble up in your chest at his question.

"The Separatists have done plenty already to know him," you spat, venom seething in your voice. "You liars-you devils-you have already killed him a year ago!" You must have started tensing up or moving forward with the anger in your answer, because the grip on your shoulders suddenly got a lot stronger. It made you wince in pain.

But the general said nothing. So you continued, brain and mind stewing in your own repressed anger that you thought had fizzled out with your grief months ago.

"Whatever you want with him, forget it! His memory is already written! He has….he has no more debts to pay...you've...gotten what you wanted from Kalee already." Anger quickly fizzled into grief, grief into sadness, and with sadness came tears. They started to roll down your eyes as raw, unkempt memories felt the need to flicker behind your eyes again.

The crash. The mourning. The bodiless ceremony. First one lover, and then the other. Being sent away when you had nobody to care for you anymore.

When your eyes started to sting too much from the tears, you finally had to close them tight. It didn't much help to dispel the memories; they were supposed to have been buried long ago, forced down into what would later be fuel for countless nightmares instead.

You expected a harsh retort from the general for your outburst. Perhaps a strike to your cheek, a kick to your stomach. Hell, even a verbal harassment was the least of what you expected him to do after such a show of disrespect. But all you got was silence.

The darkness behind your eyelids was the only solace you had, until his voice spoke again.

"...release the villager."

The response from the droids came faster than you could comprehend. Their grip released your shoulders without hesitation, leaving your body to wobble with it's own weight and sense of balance (or lack thereof, considering the flash of raging emotions). You weren't sure if the happiness of your release was enough to overcome the grief of your memories or the dread of your punishment.

You still didn't know why they stole you from the little village in the first place. But it was nice to feel your shoulders again, at least.

The strength to open your eyes didn't come for a few more seconds, stinging and painful, but you were still able to look at the general through red-rimmed lids.

He was still looking at you, but the mood of his glare had shifted. Softened. A sharp pang in your chest came when you realized how honestly familiar they looked, but that was probably a painful irony that came from the gods' sick sense of humor. Perhaps it was punishment for something you'd done in life. To see the eyes of your dead lover in someone who would kill you.

Rather poetic, wasn't it?

It almost made you want to cry even more, terror in your body be damned.

"What do you want with me?" You sobbed in question, somehow brave enough with the push of your emotional misery. "I don't know anything about his death."

Grievous stared at you for what felt like a long, long time before speaking.

"...He is not dead."

Somehow, where those words should have thrown your brain and mind for a loop of logic, it rather infuriated you. What was his claim worth against a whole year of pain and suffering at the loss of someone you loved so dearly? Who was he, general or not, to make a claim that completely obliterated mourning and memories that made it false?

You took a brave, wobbly step forward and raised your hand to point a sharp finger in the general's direction.

"Who are you to tell me he' .dead?" Rage simmered in your voice, restrained only by the fact that his claim was so ludicrous, it was hard to understand what he was trying to convince you. "What in the world can you claim to know about the warrior I loved?"

He met your approach with a step of his own; you didn't cower back this time. But it wasn't until he raised one of his clawed hands that you started to realize how much you had fucked up your situation. Prepared for the worst, your eyes shut tight and your fists clenched hard enough to dig your fingernails into your palm.

You expected a strike that might send you into the metal floor, knocking you out cold. But instead, you felt….

Fingers. More accurately, fingertips. You felt them against your cheek, stroking the side of your face in a gesture reminiscent of so many dreams ago. And opening your eyes helped you to realize that it wasn't a dream, nor was it a figment of your imagination.

His hand cradled your cheek, thumb stroking carefully over a scar under your left eye.

"Sha'k djit, me'quijk," Grievous whispered, so low and rough of a voice that it would have been hard to hear as anything other than a growl if you weren't standing so close in front of him, barely a few feet apart from one another.

They were words you hadn't heard in a long, long time.

 _Be calm, my flower._

What caught you off-guard the most from the whisper of Kaleesh were the specific wording. It wasn't just 'flower' that he called you, but a specific species of flower named for it's fantastic color in the spring, visible only for a few weeks of the year. It was a flower you had grown to love.

It was a flower that your lover always called you by.

The recollection of that fact was like pushing over the first domino in the string of thoughts, growing bigger, harder to understand. It made your heart beat faster and faster as it started to dawn on you what such a simple gesture actually meant.

You started to shake. Tears welled in your eyes. Emotions swelled, so thick and so harsh, all you could manage to do was bring one shaking, fragile hand up to press over the metal one on your cheek.

There wasn't any irony in the recognition of his eyes.

So many questions came as strongly as your tears, rolling down your cheeks like waterfalls of grief and confusion, but also half-numb joy and wonder. It was a dream and yet it wasn't. A nightmare melded with a string of hope that had somehow taken a wrong turn inside your head.

But his touch felt far too real to be anything but reality.

As if to test the truth, you took in a breath and carefully, feebly whispered his name, staring up into those golden, predator-like eyes. It was soft enough that even you barely heard it's utterance. But Grievous-Qymaen?-nodded. In turn, he too whispered your name, in such a beautiful, though rough kaleesh sound that it almost reminded you of the last time he had said it before….

It was hard to tell what he was feeling through it all, so careful had he always been to mask whatever emotions filled him.

Fear looked as assured as confidence. Despair as content as calmness. Even before, never once could you predict the warrior's emotions with much truth.

He closed his eyes and carefully leaned down, just enough to bump his forehead to your own. Like something out of a dream, the gesture of familiar intimacy had you feeling overwhelmed with emotions. So much so that you felt dizzy.

Really dizzy. The world was starting to muddle together, a mishmash of shapes and colors that it made you sick to your stomach.

It was barely a few moments after the initial sensation that you finally blacked out from stress and overwhelming emotions.

But instead of feeling the floor when your legs finally gave out, you felt arms. They were as cold and metallic as the ground, but they were familiar and gentle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** I could attempt to apologize for how long it took me to write this chapter (well, write much of anything, honestly). I would like to attribute it to a combination of author's block and laziness, maybe even a slight dash of depression where I simply couldn't bring myself to do much of anything but constantly play Magic the Gathering on my laptop and feel as though my writing sucked.

But alas, I return with writing! And drama! And most importantly, feels!

* * *

 _The day was hot, but not much hotter than any other day in the expanse of the valley between the mountains to both the north and south. It was just enough heat to avoid layers not absolutely required to keep yourself from getting cut-up by the sand picked up by wind. With the dry season coming quickly over the village and region, small sandstorms were becoming increasingly common._

 _The rough, coarse sand didn't so much bother your neighbors as much. Their skin was tougher, scaled and hardened so that a mere gust of sandy wind hardly bothered them. But your skin was much softer, and the same breeze could scrape your arms, legs and face raw. It didn't matter how well you had assimilated into the culture of the village; you simply couldn't control the basis of your biology._

 _At least your neighbors were tolerant of your disability._

 _Covering up your body was the only way to protect from injury, but you had to carefully balance protection from abrasion with the very real possibility of overheating. Temperature in the region wasn't as harsh as the northern plains, but it got bad enough for the majority of the year that anything heavy had the real threat of giving you a heatstroke._

 _Bandages were the best of your options. They were light enough that they didn't make you pass out, but were thick enough to keep the blowing sand from scraping up your skin. And they were free, technically, given to you by your neighbors when they saw how horribly you fared otherwise._

 _As much as you wanted to think of their kindness as just that, a gesture of good faith alone, you simply knew it wasn't anything more than a sign of respect to the man who had saved your life by taking you in._

 _His name was Qyaemen Jai Sheelal._

* * *

You awoke to darkness. Your senses were numb, stolen by the black air around you. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and outside what you were laying on, nothing to feel either. As sense started to trickle back into your rampant, panicking thoughts, you almost thought for a moment that you were dead. Obvious reason came quick to smash that worry right back down the back of your mind, but the panic remained even without having a reason to. Because it was dark.

After tripping over your own feet in trying to slide out of whatever sort of bed you'd been sleeping on, you reach your arms out and start waving them around to feel for something. A wall, an edge-something to give you reason to think you weren't just existing in a void of black. Eventually you do find one-a wall-and you use it to wander farther through the room. The wall itself was cold and smooth. Metal, of course, but what you managed to feel with your palms was utterly smooth and featureless.

At some point you could pick out a thin stream of light coming from what was probably the other side of the room. And you were desperate enough to get out of the darkness that you forwent the protection of the wall in your blindness, and started scurrying towards what felt like salvation to your thought-swirling brain.

Somewhere in the frantic motion, your shin connected solidly with something that was connected to the floor. Even with adrenaline pumping through your veins, you didn't have the chance to figure out what the unknown object was as you tumbled down to the floor in a heap of pain and confusion.

The air was thick for a moment with the sound of your body hitting the ground and your painful yelp that accompanied it. Stupid stupid stupid! Pain simmered in your shin, hip, and shoulder that had connected solidly with something metal, and for several agony-blinded seconds you could do nothing more than whimper and clutch your leg, as if rubbing at the skin and muscle would somehow coax it to feel the slightest bit better again.

It worked, but only after at least half a minute of rubbing and whining.

In the same time, there was the sound of heavy, muffled footsteps just outside the room. The sliver of light was a door, now more obvious when desperation had been beaten just as painfully as your body by the floor itself. And just beyond the door, someone was moving. Someone was opening it.

The sliver of light became a flood, filling the room with something so bright that it hurt to keep your eyes open; they had adjusted so well to the darkness that it felt legitimately painful to open them even a slight. Because of that, it left you otherwise helpless to whomever it was who had heard your scuffle for freedom.

"Don't hurt me," You begged, reaching one hand away from your throbbing shin so you could try blocking out the light from your eyes, if only to catch a glimpse of whoever it was.

The figure at the entrance to the room was overpowered by the bright lights just behind it, but the shape was enough to recognize once your senses started to ebb away from panic and fear. Well, the fear was still there (it was an almost constant thing at that point), but you had enough sense to figure out who it was staring down at you.

General Grievous was a tall, unique figure in your mind-you had never seen someone quite like him.

Well.

He stood tall in the doorway; once your eyes had adjusted to the light outside the room instead of stark darkness, you could tell that he wasn't glaring, he wasn't snarling, he was just….looking. Your eyes met with his, and that same overwhelming sense of grief started to overtake you again. Stomach in knots, heart going crazy; the fear was starting to drain a little, just so your mind could compensate for the intense feelings of grief that took its place.

He started to kneel down to your level, offering a hand in an awkward sort of motion that made you react in what one might consider fear-though painful, you thrashed your limbs enough to push yourself farther back, away from the man.

"You don't exist," You mumbled, eyes going wide as realization and recollection of the day prior filled in the empty spots. But it came with not shock-at least, not the fainting sort-but awe and disbelief. "You are dead. You're supposed to be very dead."

He stood back up to his full height again, though it was hard to tell what he felt about your rejection to his offer of help. Maybe anger. Maybe sadness. Maybe he wasn't even surprised.

But the general wasn't silent at least.

"I am supposed to be dead," He whispered. It was the first time in many seasons that you'd heard his voice; it was lower and raspier than you remembered, but it was still him. "Qymaen Jai Sheelal. I haven't been called that in a long time."

His name in his voice. It was hard to swallow, and harder to hear.

But it didn't answer the increasing number of questions that only started filling your mind. The dozens you had when you were told he was gone, and the dozens more that came after spending nearly a year alone, believing you had lost the only person who had ever showed you real compassion (ironically enough).

"...Why aren't you dead?" Came your light, breathy whisper. That's when you started rising to your feet, legs firm enough to the ground that you didn't fear for toppling over on yourself. That was also the moment that Grievous decided it was appropriate to turn the lights on for the room, showering it in a bright, almost clinical white light.

The assumption that you had been in a quarters room hadn't been too far off. The bed was behind you, a closet somewhere to your left, and a desk just beside the bed far to your right. A chair, the one thing you had managed to trip over, sat in the center of the room with a small table in front of it.

It wasn't any form of a cage, nor a prison. It was a mildly comfortable room one might give to an ambassador or ally.

Anger started to well up in the absence of an answer, so you merely repeated the question again. This time, you took a step forward.

"Why aren't you dead?!" It was too much to take in. It called to question everything you had believed for a good portion of your life. Specifically, it made betrayal burn in the middle of your gut. "What happened to you? Why didn't you come back for anyone?"

You took another step forward, then another, and eventually you were within arm's reach of him. And still you were yelling, trying to get out all the hurt in your heart, all the betrayal and confusion that simmered just below the surface.

"Why didn't you come back for me?! I thought you were dead! Like-like you were never coming back dead, and I didn't have anyone-" When shaking in anger wasn't enough of a physical reaction, you brought up a fist and slammed it into his chest. And then again. And then again.

"I was alone! First Kummar, and then you?! You spent a whole damn year knowing you'd left me alone and you didn't-you...fucking….!"

It was definitely metal. And it really, really hurt. But you did it again, and again, slamming the side of your fist into his chest when words weren't enough to communicate the waterfall of pain and misery you'd kept in so long. It wasn't like there was ever anyone who would understand.

"You said you hated them! You said you absolutely hated them and now you're-you're fucking WORKING for the Separatists?!"

Even though it had been the only option to save his people from poverty and starvation, when Qymaen Jai Sheelal signed to work for the InterGalactic Banking Clan, he was essentially signing away all that had made him who he was. A warrior, a leader, a proud Kaleesh fighter who sought nothing else but the best for his people, village, and those personally close to him.

Somehow, the man who stood before you was supposed to be the very same. The man who had died in a crash, who had left you alone and in a world under the constant threat of enslavement. Supposed death wasn't his fault at all-that was not the reason for your rage and you had long accepted that he had died as he wanted to live, as a warrior.

But he hadn't died, obviously. Though he wasn't entirely flesh, he was still the same Qymaen Jai Sheelal who had taken you in so many years before. The one you fell in love with.

The one who never came back to Kalee. Grievous was the one who had his people thinking he was gone forever, lost to the war, leaving behind a grieving lover who found herself weak and exposed to something she couldn't even defend herself from. It was the reason you were sent away-to keep you safe.

A year of lies and pain that could have been entirely nonexistent.

There was so much pain that you only wished could come out, but there was only so much that fists could take, regardless of rage, before physical pain made it impossible to keep hitting his chest. You leaned your weight against him, limp with exhaustion when the display of rage drained most of it out. Your fists pressed to his chest; they were definitely going to blossom with dark bruises tomorrow.

Tears messily ran down your cheeks, blurring your vision and making your face feel red and puffy.

And only then did Grievous seem to have the will (or the heart) to say something, and instead of anything to start answering your questions, it in itself was a question.

"Why were you on that planet?" He sounded low. Numb. It was as if he didn't hear your pain, didn't feel your fists on his chest. And honestly, he didn't even look as if you'd raised a hand at all-he was all hard durasteel where he used to be softer, warm flesh. It made you only want to cry harder

"They sent me away!" You exclaimed in response, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world that he'd find you there. "Without you, everyone in the village feared for me! They thought I would be-" Your voice stopped abruptly. Slow breath in, slow breath out. "...The warriors who remained in the village figured I would be safer….elsewhere."

And so they had sent you away a year prior, under the (fair) assumption that you'd be helpless without anyone bound to you. You didn't exactly blame anyone either.

There was silence between both of you.

Grievous made a noise somewhere between a growl and a cough as he raised up a hand that neared your head, and eventually fell upon it. The touch, familiar yet foreign with the cold of his metallic palm and digits, was surprisingly gentle. Not because of his relationship with you, but instead because of what he had become , which still was beyond your understanding. He was more metal than flesh anymore, and it was difficult to believe he was still capable of such softness.

He stroked over your hair for a moment, as if feebly trying to calm your emotions in the only way he could. Words would have angered you, excuses would have made your misery even worse. A touch-now that was one of the only things that could help. A touch that you had missed in nearly every one of your dreams. At least, flesh or not, the once-proud kaleesh warrior seemed to remember what soothed you.

But it didn't last for very long. Before you could collect your thoughts enough to respond with something other than shock, Grievous stiffened and took a step back, away from you so that he stood once more in the doorway.

He pulled out a communicator before you had a chance to question it. And the moment he did, the cyborg's golden eyes fell to the figure that erupted from the top of his blinking communicator.

"What do you need, milord?" He said, sounding far prouder and displeased than he had moments before. You merely stared in confusion at the exchange, taking a few moments to figure out who he was talking to.

The blue humanoid haze was turned away from you, giving you only a glimpse of the back of a cloak and vague shape of a human man's head. He spoke to Grievous with a calm, overly-charming voice that felt more appropriate of a freighter-dealer than anything else.

"You have been absent for some time from the helm of the ship, general. I merely wished to know what you have been distracted with," The shape said, blue form flickering ever so slightly. "You haven't forgotten the importance of your next meeting, have you not?"

"Of course not," Grievous replied shortly. "I assure you, I know very well how to negotiate with other beings, regardless of how I loathe them."

For some reason, you thought there was some irony in his words. The figure seemed satisfied enough with the answer, as he didn't dwell much longer on passively insulting the general himself.

"I trust you do, general," The figure took a moment of pause before turning his head slightly, and then, as if realizing you were standing there in the room, he turned to face you.

Even with the flicker and dull nature of the hologram, it wasn't hard to tell that the figure on the communicator was an old man, standing straight and tall, staring at you with a look of….distaste? It was hard to tell from that point, but his question did plenty to give clue with what he thought of you.

"Have you gotten anything out of our little guest, general?" He asked, not talking to you at all despite giving you a very long, hard glare.

Grievous flickered his eyes to you. Both of your gazes caught, and for a moment, you felt vaguely afraid for what his answer would be, and you weren't sure why.

But a moment passed, and Grievous eventually answered in an assured, low, careful tone. He was once again the General Grievous that many had grown to fear, the commander of the droid armies who had gained quite a reputation of brutality through the first year of the on-going Clone Wars.

"...Very little as of now, Lord Dooku. But I'll have more soon. She's being quite….helpful." The sneer in his words, the hiss in what was obviously some sort of threat, it was plenty enough to make you stare at him and shiver, as terrified as a small animal in a dark forest.

Whether it was your reaction or Grievous' promise itself, the man (Dooku? As in Count Dooku?) smiled.

"Good. But, nevertheless I require your attentions elsewhere. General, focus on the task at hand before falling into your own personal matters."

They exchanged a few short, tense pleasantries before the man finally disappeared, leaving the room far colder than it was before. You were shivering, and couldn't meet those golden eyes at all.

Had he had changed more than you thought? Had he merely been playing with feelings that weren't there anymore? Had he merely tricked you? That question hurt your heart a lot more than finding out he hadn't been dead and left you wallowing in grief for an entire year.

When Grievous took a step forward, you took a step back. This continued until you were backed to the bed itself, feeling it against the back of your legs, feeling his eyes laying on you. For some reason, you felt far, far more intimidated and afraid then you did moments before.

The entirety of your body flinched in instinctual fear when a hand gently grabbed your chin to pull your face up, forcing you to look into the other's golden eyes.

"...I have changed and lost far more than you can ever comprehend," He said lowly. "And do not mistake my lack of apology for lack of guilt-" For a moment, you wondered if it was you, or if there was a slight, barely-there sort of tremble in the cyborg's fingers where he held your chin. "-I was unaware you were even still alive yourself until recently. I was... informed that you had perished. I was informed of many things that I've only realized now as false information. If you want to blame me for that, you are very much entitled to. But do not think that I merely abandoned you."

Your brows pulled into a look of confusion, and then to a moment of shallow sadness. It didn't answer hardly any of the questions boiling in the back of your mind, but his words did enough to sate your accusations of betrayal. At least there was still a little of him in there.

"...It felt like you did," you whispered. There it was, another slight tremble in his fingers, more evident that time. Grievous pulled his hand back barely a moment after possibly realizing it himself.

He stood in front of you, an embodiment of familiarity and strangeness all at the same time. He was a man you loved, and yet a man you didn't at all know. It was hard to figure out which part of im was which.

He reached into his cloak and pulled out something in his hand. When he held it out to you, you slowly reached out in kind to take it without knowing what it was. When he dropped the device into your palm, you pulled it close to gaze down and realize that it was another communicator.

"This is a direct line to me," The general said. "Do not let anyone find it. Do not let anyone know you have it. If you didn't notice mere moments ago, there is an impression that I have absolutely no connection to you. To everyone on this ship, you are merely a pathetic woman who happens to know valuable information to the whereabouts of a Republic outpost-" He stopped for a moment, hesitating on some thought that seemed to move through his mind. When you started to look at him in curiosity, not knowing what it was he was pondering, he raised a hand and let it fall to your head again.

He stroked your hair gently, almost too much so that you barely felt the touch. He seemed almost afraid to touch you-it was obvious in his eyes when you looked into them.

"...You will make sure that no matter what, nobody knows the past we share. Make sure that nobody knows, especially the man you saw me speaking to. I assume you know who Count Dooku is?"

A slow nod of your head answered it, and the wideness of your eyes answered the extent of what you knew about him. He was the man behind most of the destruction of the war itself, who you had always assumed and figured was the leader of the Separatist movement itself. A powerful sith lord.

Grievous was satisfied that he didn't have to explain it all to you. He made another growl-like humming sound before stroking your hair once more and pulling his hand away.

Before you could reach out to him, the general turned his body away and stepped to the doorway, but he didn't exit. Instead he paused.

"...I don't know what he would do if he learned who you really are. However, he seems very fond of destroying many of the things I once held dear."

All you could do was watch as Grievous left the room, closing and locking the door behind him. The exit left you alone once more in a now-lit room, engulfed in relief in some thoughts, but riddled in worry and fear in a great many more.

But at least there was some comfort in knowing that deep inside his new metal body, Qymaen was still alive. There was even more comfort in knowing, at least to some extent, that he still cared about you.


End file.
